1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a disk drive device for recording and/or playing information signals with respect to an optical disk and, more particularly, to a disk drive device and a disk transfer mechanism of the so-called slot-in type, in which the optical disk is directly inserted into the device body.
2. Background Art
As the optical disk, there have been widely known in the related art a variety of optical disks such as the CD (Compact Disk), the DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) or the BD (Blue-ray Disk), and the magneto-optical disks such as the MO (magneto Optical) or the MD (Mini Disk). A variety of disk drive devices have appeared for those disks or disk cartridges.
The disk drive devices are divided into: the type, in which a cover or door at a casing is opened so that a disk is directly loaded on a turntable seen from the opening; the type, in which the disk can be automatically loaded by placing it on a disk tray to be horizontally let into and out of a casing so that the disk is automatically loaded on the inside turntable when the disk tray is let in; or the type, in which the disk is directly loaded on the turntable disposed on the disk tray. However, any type requests the operator to open/close the cover or door, to let the disk tray in and out or to load the disk on the turntable.
There is also a disk drive device of the so-called “slot-in type”, in which the disk is automatically loaded on the turntable merely by inserting the disk from a disk slot formed in the front face of the casing. This slot-in type disk drive device is equipped with a pair of opposed guide rollers for clamping the disk inserted from the disk slot. By turning the paired guide rollers in the opposite directions, the disk drive device performs the loading operation to pull the disk inserted from the disk slot into the inside of the casing, and the ejecting operation to eject the disk from the disk slot to the outside of the casing.
On the other hand, a mobile device such as a note type personal computer having the disk drive device mounted thereon is desired to reduce its size, weight and thickness, and the disk drive device is accordingly desired to reduce its own size, weight and thickness. From this background, the slot-in type disk drive device is provided, at its leading end portion, with an abutting portion to abut against the outer circumference of a disk inserted from the disk slot of a front panel, and has a plurality of turning arms turnably supported at their root end portions. The disk drive device (as referred to JP-A-05-100595 (Patent Document 1)) performs a loading operation to pull the disk from the disk slot into the inside of the casing while turning those turning arms in a plane parallel to the disk, and an ejecting operation to eject the disk from the disk slot to the outside of the casing. Of the disk drive devices thus thinned, the ultra-thin type disk drive device to be mounted on the note-type personal computer has standard sizes of a thickness of 12.7 mm. There is also proposed a disk drive device, which is so thinned to 9.5 mm as to equal to that of the hard disk drive (HDD).
In the disk drive device thus performing the disk loading operation and the ejecting operation by arranging those turning arms and by turning the arms in a plane parallel to the disk, the optical disk is ejected by turning the arms by an urging member such as the torsion coil spring urging the optical disk in the ejecting direction. When the optical disk is to be ejected to the outside of the device, the opening formed at the center of the optical disk has to be exposed to the outside, and the optical disk has to be so stopped at a position as will not drop by its own weight. By thus stopping the optical disk at that position, the user is enabled to grip the center hole or the side face of the optical disk so that the user can handle the optical disk without touching the signal-recorded face.
In the disk drive device thus far described, however, the driving force to eject the optical disk is only the force of the spring elasticity, and the stopped position of the optical disk ejected to the outside of the device is liable to disperse. This dispersion of the stop position of the optical disk may also be caused by the change of the elastic force due to the aging of the urging member. Moreover, the disk slot for inserting or ejecting the optical disk may be equipped with a panel curtain or the like of a nonwoven fabric so as to stabilize the stop position of the optical disk or to clear the signal recording face of dust or the like. If the quality of the panel curtain disperses, however, it is difficult to stabilize the stop position of the optical disk.